Change colours for character differences for diff-mode

Question

I've changed my diff-mode colours according to this article, but the character-based differences are shown in the original(?) and very bright colours, making them quite unreadable.

How do I change the colours that show the char-by-char differences on the removed/added lines?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 03 '21 at 14:45

2

With diff-refine faces:

(defun update-diff-refine-colors ()
  "update the colors for diff faces"
  (set-face-attribute 'diff-refine-added nil
                      :foreground "white" :background "darkgreen")
  (set-face-attribute 'diff-refine-removed nil
                      :foreground "white" :background "darkred")
  (set-face-attribute 'diff-refine-changed nil
                      :foreground "white" :background "darkblue"))
(eval-after-load "diff-mode"
  '(update-diff-refine-colors))

edited Aug 03 '21 at 14:45

Daniil Iaitskov

205
1
8

answered Apr 06 '18 at 12:00

djangoliv

3,169
16
31

Very good! I merged them into one function. However strangely, earlier all of my diff chunks were automatically refined (char differences showed automatically). Now I have to do it manually. How do I enable it automatically? The linked article suggests a snippet to enable this, but it really did happen on my machine without any such snippet... https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/28271/diff-mode-refine-all-hunks-when-opening-a-diff-file – forthrin Apr 06 '18 at 13:07
I'm pretty sure that Emacs does'nt refine by default. You need to used a function for that. – djangoliv Apr 06 '18 at 13:24

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 06 '18 at 16:16

There are more faces involved than the ones mentioned in the link you pointed to. The answer is to use C-u C-x = to find out what faces are involved. Those are the ones you need to customize.

Use M-x customize-face to customize the faces you are interested in. If you don't know which faces they are, put the cursor on that highlighted text and use C-u C-x =. Look near the bottom of *Help* for the face name.

From @djangoliv's answer it seems that these are the faces you need to customize: diff-refine-added, diff-refine-removed, diff-refine-changed.

So just M-x customize-face diff-refine-added and define the face as you like.

Do the same for diff-refine-removed and diff-refine-changed.

Easy, persistent, and the way Emacs wants to help you customize faces. See the Emacs manual, node Specific Customization.

Ah! That's a brilliant way to find out in the future! – forthrin Apr 07 '18 at 05:47 — forthrin, Apr 07 '18 at 05:47

Change colours for character differences for diff-mode

2 Answers2